Mutiny!
The brutal murder of Captain Hugh Pigot
I’ve worked with some great managers in my time, ones I would give my absolute all for, ones I’d stay on extra unpaid for, drop my time off and hurry in to work for. I’ve also worked with some real idiots, ones who nail their colours to their mast and will not listen to reason, ones who are fast and loose with disciplinaries and willing to make too many examples favouring the rod to the carrot and the ones who will blame you for doing your job.
In the workplace it can be very problematic to deal with, most I have buried my head down and got on with the work because I have a good work ethic, need money and happy to follow orders - usually I out last them too!
What has this got to do with Naval history?
Well being a good Captain is basically being a manager of the crew and vessel and like managers you get great Captains and you get Captain Hugh Pigot…
Great Royal Naval Captains include Polar explorers Francis Crozier and James Clark Ross who commanded their ships and men through horrific conditions and back again, Sir William Cornwallis from what I have read and because it is me,Karl von Muller who during the Emden’s campaign really took care of his men.
Discipline at sea had to be maintained and during the eighteenth and nineteenth century there was also the class structure that had to be maintained in which the Officers were the social betters of their crew but in a minority. The Captain and officers relied on the Marines to help maintain security and discipline but is that always enough?
If I was to say Mutiny most people would think of the Bounty and maybe the Nore but in 1797 there was a horrific incident on the Fifth rate frigate, HMS Hermione.
The end of the eighteenth century saw political change and freedoms as a very real possibility with the Americans challenging Britain and the French populace overthrowing the Ancien regime and there were concerns that such moves would come to Britain. At Spithead and the Plymouth in 1797 sailors mutinied demanding better pay, shore leave, conditions as well as sickness and injury pay. This mutiny is put down and negotiated with pardons .
The Nore mutiny had similar aims but also called on the King to end war with France and it escalated to blockading London and plans to take the ships to France but it fell away. After a couple of executions the rest of the crews were pardoned and a line was drawn under the incidents.
But this was not the end of the feelings of unrest within the Navy, all that was needed was another spark.
Captain Hugh Pigot was the second son of Admiral Hugh Pigot which meant that his career within the Royal Navy was an inevitability and at age 24 he took his first command, the sloop Swan in the Caribbean. He wasn’t a great Captain, he ha had been involved in a collision with a merchant ship, which he blamed the other party and when he went on to command the frigate Success he carries out a large amount of floggings within nine months (85) and for charges ranging from mutiny to drunkenness but to the same amount of lashes which doesn’t seem to equate. He would also go on to flog an American Merchant Captain after another collision which sparked a possible international incident.
After Pigot apologised at his court martial was due to head back to England and away from command but feeling he had been misunderstood, Admiral Hyde Parker had him reassigned to the Hermoine in February 1797.
Once aboard Pigot continued his previous poor management techniques by treating the crew unequally with those whom he has served with before getting preferential treatment and again the floggings are back and even treated his officers poorly.
Lieutenant Harris, who managed to save the ship from running aground, was dressed down and blamed for the incident by Pigot which led to a court martial and on pronouncement of innocence forced to leave the ship. Midshipman Casey takes responsibility for the sloppy work of his Topmen in the rigging but Pigot demands he gets to his knees and beg for forgiveness which the Midshipman refuses to do. What follows is a flogging and disturbing which did not sit well with the crew at all. Throw in the fact that Pigot had taken to flogging the last man down from the sails, this led to the deaths of three men who in their haste to not be the last, fell to their deaths. Pigot not only ordered the rest of the Top men flogged, he also had the bodies unceremoniously thrown overboard denying the unfortunate victims of a funeral.
The crew were not happy. With most of them being impressed Irish and American merchant sailors who were not part of the crew voluntarily and the actions of Pigot just made them question what they could do about it and generally there was not much after all the topmen who had protested the dumping of the bodies they were flogged. There was no route of recourse, not even for the officers.
Instead they turned to rum.
Rum can lead to very bad decisions and acts you will regret in the morning but in the moment it led the sailors to vent their anger. The Marine on duty outside Pigot’s cabin was overpowered and a hoard of drunk angry sailors attacked the sleeping Captain with axes and knives before throwing him overboard whether alive or dead.
It didn’t end there though as the First, Second, Third Lieutenants, Marine Commander, Surgeon, Bo’sun and purser were also all murdered and their bodies jettisoned overboard with the Captain’s clerk and two of the Midshipman. Only the gunner and carpenter were spared along with the ship’s master as he was able to navigate whilst the other two were useful to the ship.
As the rum haze passed the mutineers thought about what to do now and going back to a British port was going to be out of the question, they would be in a lot of trouble and face executions. Instead they set sail for the Spanish port of La Guaira where they claimed the officers had been put in a boat and left to navigate away. The Spanish rewarded the men for the ship and offered a position in the Spanish army, labour or refitting their ship which was renamed Santa Cecilia with some of the former crew aboard.
When news reached Parker he demanded the ship’s return along with the mutineers to face the King’s justice. Some thirty three men were retaken by the British through various means and Hyde started to bring justice by hanging and gibbeting twenty four of them and transporting one. Admiral Richard Blight did pardon a few including Pigot’s elderly servant and his son as they were considered to have been unable to stop the mutiny and were unwilling bystanders much to Parker’s annoyance,
All this could have been avoidable though had Pigot been much more able to manage and work with his crew, listen to his officers and stay the rod in favour of the carrot especially in times of socio-political upheaval. Was Pigot exceptionally bad? I wouldn’t have said he was the worst Captain but his sense of entitlement and imbalance led to the crew feeling there was nothing else that could be done, this was not the first mutiny of the period and nor would it be the last.